My favorite LA skate-punk band FIDLAR just did something I honestly didn’t expect they will ever do: They recorded an Elliott Smith’s song to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his death. They posted it on their Tumblr followed by the sentence ‘woops… totally forgot to post this… RIP Elliott Smith. : (‘. But did they pick the most common song, or the most punk one? Not at all, they chose to cover a rarity, ‘Whatever (Folk Song in C)’ released on Smith’s posthumous compilation ‘New Moon’. Quite unexpected and quite good too!
These guys are usually some energetic bunch of guys, with nose-bleeding and back-rolling stage antics, and drunk-punk songs installing chaos and leaving a floor packed with crushed beer cans when they are done. But here, it is a totally different picture, they play the tune very gently, close to the way Elliott was playing it. Zac Carper takes his most fragile-broken-tired voice whereas the soothing guitars and beach-like noise in the background fit perfectly the melancholic, intimate and sweet ambiance of the song. Of course, don’t be fooled by the faux-upbeat and faux-Dylan vibe of the slightly country song – and the FIDLAR guys aren’t certainly fooled if they have picked up this tune – the lyrics have this multi-layered meaning as it is always the case for Elliott; he doesn’t reveal much about the ‘they’ ,‘you’ and ‘me’, playing with metaphors between addiction, relationship and the confusion between the two. Listen to FIDLAR’s cover, it’s such an unusual side of these party guys.